add new community stories

Author: puredanger

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+= CollBox
+Alex Miller
+2017-04-06
+:jbake-type: story
+:jbake-company: CollBox
+:jbake-link: https://collbox.co/
+
+We talked with Cameron Desautels about his use of Clojure and ClojureScript at https://collbox.co/[CollBox].
+
+[.right]
+image:/images/content/stories/collbox.png["CollBox",height="80"]
+
+*How long have you been working with Clojure and ClojureScript?*
+
+I've been using Clojure for about five years, and ClojureScript for one year. I discovered Lisps early in my programming career (probably via Emacs) and thus have been a Lisp fan for about 15 years, so Clojure felt like coming home.
+
+*What product or service are you building?*
+
+We're using Clojure and ClojureScript to build the next generation of debt collection services. We integrate with cloud accounting software to conveniently ingest and validate debt, manage a network of reputable debt collectors behind the scenes, and intelligently match debt with collectors to optimize for the best rates and odds of collection. At the same time, we're working to raise the bar on accountability and transparency in an industry that has historically not been known for those things.
+
+*How big is your team?*
+
+Just me! We're a small startup, and I comprise the engineering team (for now). But I consider it a testament to Clojure that a sole developer can build and maintain a production web application. In fact, the roots of our company trace back to winning the grand prize at the at 2015 QuickBooks Connect Hackathon, where we beat out teams with five professional engineers who work together every day—again, with Clojure and one engineer. A good tool is a force multiplier.
+
+*What about working with Clojure and ClojureScript gives you the most value?*
+
+The single most valuable aspect of working with Clojure, for me, is the language's commitment to reusing a small number of readable, immutable data structures. I configure my application with basic data structures; I wire my application's dependencies together with basic data structures; I write my database queries in them, I log metrics with them, and when I have to diagnose a web exception at 2am, I'm very fortunate that that request came in as a familiar data structure that I can print, log, inspect, or update with the same tools I've spent years getting comfortable with.
+
+I can't stress enough how superior this is to having a reference to an opaque Foo object and wondering "what can this thing do? What's inside of it? Can I serialize it? How do I create one? Is it going to change out from under me?"
+
+*What is your stack?*
+
+Our frontend is all ClojureScript using https://github.com/Day8/re-frame[re-frame]. The backend is Clojure running on AWS backed by http://www.datomic.com/[Datomic] (on DynamoDB). Our web framework is custom-built, but makes heavy use of https://github.com/ztellman/aleph[aleph], https://github.com/juxt/bidi[bidi], https://github.com/stuartsierra/component[component], and https://github.com/cognitect/transit-format[transit].

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+= Cybozu Startups
+Alex Miller
+2017-04-07
+:jbake-type: story
+:jbake-company: Cybozu Startups
+:jbake-link: https://anpi.cstap.com/anpi2.html
+
+This interview is with Ikuru Kanuma, a developer for Cybozu Startups in Japan.
+
+[.right]
+image:/images/content/stories/cstap.png["cstap",height="80"]
+
+*What product or service are you building with Clojure or ClojureScript?*
+
+We built a https://anpi.cstap.com/anpi2.html[safety confirmation service] with Clojure and ClojureScript.
+
+The main features are:
+
+* Trigger emails/notifications through disaster reports (earthquake, tsunami, etc) from the Japanese Meteorological Agency, or user action.
+* The users can access a questionnaire from the email/notification and answer their status, such as whether they are safe, can work/commute etc.
+* Provide a summarized view of the responses which can be used to make business continuity decisions in case of a disaster.
+
+The overall system is composed of:
+
+* A main user facing web application (Clojure/ClojureScript)
+* A worker that sends out the emails/notifications (Clojure)
+* An API server for the mobile app (Clojure)
+* An API server that allows external systems to update user data (Clojure)
+* A backend Admin application (Clojure/ClojureScript)
+* Mainly deployed on AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
+
+*How big is the team you have using Clojure or ClojureScript?*
+
+We are a team of 3, and all of us use Clojure for the server side, and ClojureScript for the frontend. All 3 of us develop in Emacs + Cider. 2 of us use a Linux machine, and 1 uses a Mac.
+
+*What Clojure or ClojureScript library have you enjoyed working with the most?*
+
+I would like to mention 2 libraries:
+
+* https://github.com/cognitect/transit-clj[transit-clj] - because it removes much of the friction when passing data between the server and the browser, which is a common problem in most other languages.
+* https://github.com/juxt/bidi[bidi] -  we cannot imagine life without it! Our app has quite a few dynamically generated URLs, and creating those without bidirectional routing would have been a nightmare.
+
+*What about working with Clojure or ClojureScript gives you the most value?*
+
+* Interactive development with the REPL and the excellent tools such as Cider and figwheel, which allows for extremely quick iteration.
+* Immutable data structures, for making the programs really simple and easy to understand
+* Ability to share code between the frontend and backend
+
+*Why is using Clojure or ClojureScript valuable to your business?*
+
+Apart from the technical benefits, we are focusing and investing on Clojure for tech branding, which in turn the ultimate goal is to recruit talented engineers. The factors that were important for branding were:
+
+* Something that is going to stay around for a long time (So a programing language over some library/framework)
+* Something that helps an engineer grow
+* Something that makes an engineer excited
+* Something that engineers interested in it tend to be talented
+* Did not have to be something popular as we wanted to keep a small team
+* Less competition in terms of recruitment
+* Something that we can be the best in Japan
+
+Clojure matches these factors really well, and so far we are happy with the results. That is how we gathered the 3 members of our team (all loving Clojure), and we constantly receive 1 or 2 applications every month. (FYI: We’re hiring in Japan! -> https://cstap.com/jobs/dev-engineer.html)